Britain teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession is a damning verdict on a Prime Minister who inherited a growing economy from Labour and turned it into a shrinking economy with rising unemployment.

Cameron and George Osborne’s claims to have secured the recovery were exposed as empty spin.

And blaming the euro is a coward’s excuse, ConDem spending cuts are driving this misery and Tory austerity will soon take huge bites out of incomes, benefits and services.

Hardship is the goal, not the by-product, of this callous, ideological Turbo Thatcherism.

Squeezing cash out of a fragile Britain is criminally irresponsible when the economy’s crying out for spending power.

The price of failure – in longer dole queues – is too high and the PM risks a social explosion even greater than last summer’s riots.

The national overdraft has topped £1,000,000,000,000. But workers paying taxes in an expanding economy is the way to reduce borrowing – not sacrificing people and ­dismantling the welfare state.

Ed Miliband has a glorious opportunity to seize the initiative and offer an alternative.

The Labour leader flickered into life yesterday, mauling Cameron on the economy and the NHS and he must do that every week at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Cameron’s storm clouds gathering over the economy are Labour’s chance to make the political weather.